


Negations

by Kit



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her birthday. Did I take her somewhere nice?" The Doctor is overwhelmed into showing his petty side. Spoilers for <i>A Good Man Goes to War</i>, though in truth there's nothing much to spoil here if you've seen the trailer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negations

“She says she can't.” Rory's voice is faint and strained, though the Doctor wonders if that just might be the effect of all the mess rushing around in his head. Blood, shock. Something cold and deep and seeping right through the long, old, bloody lot of him. After images of the destroyed fleet give ordinary objects a strange, flickering corona.

He watches Rory Williams, and there are _words_ , but humans lie as much as he can, and this cannot possibly be true. 

“She just— _can't_.” 

“Can't,” he says, swallowing it down. He brings it right back up, lets it stretch across his tongue. Horrible things, words. “River Song _can't?_ Can she can't? Shan't. Shall not, cannot. Won't.” They pick up rhythm that's halfway to nonsense, rolling about the air, and Rory has that look again: the angry, shut-up-shut-up-there's-a- _sword_ -in-my-hand-you-idiot-in-a-bowtie look, but also the wide and wild and human and _desperate_ one. The one that says, _Please. I'm a father. And a husband. Find the people that give me those beautiful names._ The oldest look. He breathes. 

“No, Rory.” His hands twist together, nails digging into palms and thumb joints. “She...she _can't_ have said that. She knows. She wouldn't do this to m—to us. Not now. Not the way she talks.”

“I told her about the baby,” Rory says, face hollowed out and asteroid dust clinging to the folds of his cloak. “Her face—it just—she's not coming, Doctor.” His shrug is small. Determined. Brave. “It's her birthday,” he says, as if that's meant to explain something. It might, of course. Birthdays explain an awful lot. But nothing seems fit to say why the woman who can vandalise psychic paper at will, and graffiti the oldest places in the universe with words just for him, has let her prison keep her _now_. 

“We don't need her.” Rory lies valiantly for both of them. 

“Did I take her somewhere nice?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“River Song.” Rory opens his mouth— _no_ time _for this—_ but the Doctor raises his hand, letting it fall with new words. “Her birthday,” he says. “I suspect I might take her places on her birthday. New dimensions. Bad films. Narnia. _Was it_ , Rory Williams, somewhere nice? Spoil it for me.” 

“Um...the last Frost Fair. 1814. There was a hat involved.” Rory's hands sketch a pillbox. “And Stevie Wonder? Though I don't see how—”

“—Oh, the old boy's got the memory of a sieve. Easily enough done. Yes, I can see myself there. A shame.” 

“Doctor?” 

“Well, I'm going to make sure that _never_ happens, aren't I?” He smiles thinly, clapping a hand on Rory's shoulder. “Petty, but there isn't time for anything more elaborate. There's a Pond to save. Two Ponds! Practically a lake! And we haven't got all day. Chop-chop!”

Rory doesn't need to be told twice, and the Doctor allows himself the space of four heartbeats to stop the new, saw-toothed, _"Why?”_ River has given him from bleeding across his face. 


End file.
